Special counsel Robert Mueller will allow President Donald Trump to submit some written answers about whether his campaign colluded with the Russian government ahead of the 2016 election, according to a report Tuesday.
Two people briefed on the matter told The New York Times that Mueller's office made the concession in a letter to the president's legal team.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump's top lawyer in the Russia investigation, declined to confirm or deny the existence of such a letter, but acknowledged that "of course we would prefer written answers."
"It's harder to flip in sneaky questions that way," Giuliani told the New York Daily News.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Mueller's investigators and Trump's legal team have engaged in a monthslong back-and-forth about whether Trump will sit down for an interview.
The special counsel's letter reportedly doesn't completely preclude a possible interview with Trump. Mueller's investigators still hope to ask him collusion and obstruction of justice-related questions, according to the sources.
But the sources also said the letter's tone and lack of an explicit demand for written responses on obstruction had some Trump allies giddy because they reasoned the scope of a possible interview will now be far more limited than initially expected.
Echoing a previous argument, Giuliani said he will only allow Trump to submit to an interview if Mueller promises not to catch him in a "perjury trap."
"We want to make sure that the questions are appropriate, that they are decent and are not trying to trap him and that they are relevant," Giuliani said. "The only way we're going to know that is when we see the questions."
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